Yet often, of course, she explained, marriage was not the outcome of a night’s wooing.  The young Marquesan frequently brought home a girl who did not instantly win his mother’s affection.  In that case she went her way next morning after breakfast, and that was all.  Our regard for chastity was incomprehensible to Malicious Gossip, instructed though she was in all the codes of the church.  It was to her a creed preached to others by the whites, like wearing shoes or making the Sabbath a day of gloom, and though she had been told that violation of this code meant roasting forever as in a cannibal pit whose fires were never extinguished, her mind could perceive no reason for it.  She could attach no blame to an act that seemed to her an innocent, natural, and harmless amusement.

The truth is that no value was, or is, attached to maidenhood in all Polynesia, the young woman being left to her own whims without blame or care.  Only deep and sincere attachment holds her at last to the man she has chosen, and she then follows his wishes in matters of fidelity, though still to a large extent remaining mistress of herself.

The Marquesan woman, however, often denies her husband the freedom she herself openly enjoys.  This custom persists as a striking survival of polyandry, in which fidelity under pain of dismissal from the roof-tree was imposed by the wife on all who shared her affections.

This was exactly the status of a household not far from my cabin.  Haabuani, master of ceremonies at the dances, the best carver and drum-beater of all Atuona, who was of pure Marquesan blood, but spoke French fluently and earnestly defended the doctrine of the Pope’s infallibility,—­even coming to actual blows with a defiant Protestant upon my very paepae—­explained his attitude.

“If I have a friend and he temporarily desires my wife, Toho, I am glad if she is willing.  But my enemy shall not have that privilege with my consent.  I would be glad to have you look upon her with favor.  You are kind to me.  You have treated me as a chief and you have bought my kava bowl.  But, ecoutez, Monsieur, Toho does what she pleases, yet if I toss but a pebble in another pool she is furious.  See, I have the bruises still of her beating.”

With a tearful whine he showed the black-and-blue imprints of Toho’s anger, and made it known to us that the three piastres he had of me for the kava bowl had been traced by his wife to the till of Le Brunnec’s store, where Flower, the daughter of Lam Kai Oo, had spent them for ribbons.  Toho in her fury had beaten him so that for a day and a night he lay groaning upon the mats.

“That is as it should be,” said Malicious Gossip, sternly, while her curving lips set in straight lines.  Sex morality means conformity to sex tapus, the world over.

Free polyandry still exists in many countries I have seen, and in others its dying out leaves these fragmentary survivals.  I have visited the tribe of Subanos, in the west and north of the island of Mindanao in the Philippine archipelago, where the rich men are polygamists, and the poor still submit to polyandry.  Economic conditions there bring about the same relations, under a different guise, as in Europe or America, where wealthy rakes keep up several establishments, and many wage-earners support but one prostitute.